


Jettison

by callowyn



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Daddy Issues, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Uncle/Nephew Incest, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22124005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callowyn/pseuds/callowyn
Summary: A speculation on what, exactly, got Scott Hansen kicked out of the jaeger program.
Relationships: Chuck Hansen/Hercules Hansen, Chuck Hansen/Scott Hansen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Jettison

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tentacledog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledog/gifts).



Imagine that you’re Chuck Hansen. 

Imagine six years of being shunted from shatterdome to shatterdome while your dad tries to figure out what to do with you, watching your father and your uncle decimate kaiju while you insinuate yourself among the more tolerant J-tech crews until someone tells you to piss off. You claw your way into the academy at sixteen because it’s your birthright; you fall asleep on schematics and pick fights with anyone who shows you kindness because you mistake it for pity. Your body can’t make up its mind about anything except that it wants to embarrass you as much as possible: it won’t drop the baby fat from your face, no matter how much muscle you add to the rest of you, and your voice seems to jump an octave every time you speak. You are, in short, a teenage disaster. 

The thing is, you never did see much of your dad, even when you were normal and happy and had a mother; he was the surprise guest dropped on you for birthdays and blue moons more than a tangible presence in your life. He didn’t know what to do with you after Scissure and you don’t know what to do with him either. It baffles you, horrifies you sometimes, how much you still crave the attention of this practically-a-stranger who knows so much about you, and you hate him. Your hatred for Hercules Hansen is the most solid thing you’ve got going for you, the one thing you can count on never to change; he’s the center of your entire shitty world and you can’t stop looking at him. While normal kids your age are out with their friends and flirting with crushes and rolling their eyes at the embarrassing parents who just don’t get it, you are glued to a television screen watching your dad fight monsters, and you are watching him practice those same moves in the kwoon for hours, and you are watching his hands on the bo staff and the lines of sweat down his face. You can’t stop. 

The worst part is that it feels inevitable, the way you’ve twisted yourself around like this. The opposite of love is not hate but indifference, and you have never managed to be anything less than completely oriented toward your father since he lifted you into that helicopter. You want to punch him in the face. You want to lock him up so he never steps in a jaeger again. You want him to look at you and for once, for _once_ , see someone other than a disappointment (other than your mother). You hate him with your whole body and when you’re alone in your bunk at night you want him to pin you to the fucking floor. You just want to stop feeling like this for five bloody minutes. But you are just Chuck Hansen, and contrary to popular belief, you very rarely get what you want. 

Somehow, disastrously, Scott finds out. 

He thinks it’s funny. 

Scott Hansen is one half of an incredibly successful jaeger team—the prettier half, he often says with a wink—riding high on glory days and lapping up the public adoration like he was born for it. He’s always been right on the line between a charming asshole and actual trouble, but it turns out that being a hero who literally fights monsters for a living will shift that line quite a bit. Herc could’ve told you that giving Scott an inch means he takes a whole football pitch. Scott’s the kind of guy who looks for boundaries and pushes them until he finds something solid, but the world keeps giving way, and Scott has learned just how easy it can be to slide past those boundaries with a few tricks and a famous smile. Boys, after all, will be boys. 

Scott laughs and you hit him, young and terrified, but he doesn’t hit you back or storm out; he doesn’t even stop laughing. You dread the thought of anyone knowing this about you but somehow this is worse—that after your disgusting heart is wrenched out for him to see, he doesn’t believe you. It’s _not funny._

He chortles a few more times and pulls himself together. “You know that's impossible,” he says, matter-of-fact, as though you haven’t known that from the second your mind put this sickness into words. How stupid does he think you are? But what he says next derails your anger completely: “I could help you out, though.” 

The fact that you even consider it is testament to how deeply fucked up you are. It’s not like you’re just hard up for partners; even young as you are, you know there are plenty of people who’d be willing if you showed them any interest. But you aren’t interested. You want only one person, and you are never ever going to have him. 

Scott shrugs at your silence—this is all a game to him anyway, or he’d never have suggested it. “I’m the closest you’re gonna get,” he says. “I’ve been in your dad’s head. I know what he does, how he likes it.” 

That thought hits you like he probably means it to. What must it be like to know someone else’s body from the inside out? How many times have you watched your father suit up and imagined it was you in the conn-pod next to him, peeling away every avoidance and half-truth until he is finally laid bare before you? 

But that’s exactly the problem: soon enough Scott will get back in that jaeger, and then your father will see exactly what kind of sick, desperate fucker his son turned out to be. He’ll _know._

“He’ll know,” you tell Scott, realizing it’s already too late; even having this conversation means there’s too much for your uncle to take back into the drift. It’s hard to breathe. “Oh god, he’s going to know.” 

“You think I’ve been riding this long without knowing how to keep a secret?” Scott stands over you and touches the side of your head like you’re much younger than you are. “It’ll be alright, Charlie. Chuck. I’m just here to help. I know what you need.” He puts his thumb on your bottom lip and looks at you with eyes like your father’s. “Let me give it to you.” 

This is a line you told yourself you wouldn’t cross. You think about your father when you’re alone, because nothing you’ve done has taught you a way not to, but you told yourself you wouldn’t make anyone else watch you pretend. That you wouldn’t settle for anything less than the real thing. 

“Just something to think about,” Scott says, and then he leans down to whisper in your ear. “Your daddy likes it rough.” 

You grab his collar and drag him down to your level, kissing sloppy and a little bit hesitant even when you’re being as harsh as you know how. He laughs in your mouth, holds your jaw and shows you how to do it properly. You’re a good student, always have been. Scott is here to teach you. 

You don’t think too hard about why Scott is doing this, too caught up in your own head and the illusion that he’s someone else. He puts you on your knees and calls you son and you keep your eyes closed, don’t you, so lost in your own imagination that you never see how he smiles, like a shark that’s just found someone bleeding out. 

You come right in your pants, that first time, and he doesn’t even have to touch you. 

Afterwards, you go back to your life. You try not to think about the taste you got, try to stop wanting, but it’s hard when you’ve half-convinced yourself that the things you pretended actually happened. Your father snaps at you exactly the same as always. The world hasn’t come crashing down around you—at least, no more than it already was, here in the end of days. How little difference the things you do seem to make. 

So when Scott runs into you at the gym a few days later, right around the point where you have to decide if your arms hurt enough to stop hitting the punching bag, you do wonder if he wants to do it again. If he even remembers the offer. Scott makes some joke about your form, and you’re slow to counter it because you’re trying to figure out if there’s anything new in the way he grins at you. 

“Heard you and Herc got into a fight earlier,” he says, one hand on the punching bag to stop it swinging. 

Yes, you did. You’ve been hitting this bag of sand for an hour and you can’t even remember what you were fighting about anymore, just the way your father threw up his hands and walked away before you were done. It’s how most of your arguments end these days: him giving up on you. 

Scott leans into your space. He’s not quite shaped like Herc, narrower in the shoulders and a longer neck, but you’re not done growing up so he’s still bigger than you. “Still want to fight, Chuck?” 

It’s a good thing the locker room has private stalls, is all you can say about that. 

Scott winks at you sometimes when your father’s not looking—not that your father is ever looking at you. You get very good at sucking cock. You find out you like getting pushed against a wall with an arm across your throat while a rough hand gets you off and a rough voice whispers in your ear, making you imagine things filthier than even you could dream up. Scott seems to know which of your fights with your father will leave you feeling like this the most, like you’ll come apart if someone doesn’t put you back in your place. Part of you hopes that maybe it’s the drift that tells him, that those fights mess up Herc’s head even half as bad as they do yours. 

If your dad did this after you fought with him, you’d behave, wouldn’t you? God, if this was what arguing got you, you’d never stop. You let your uncle fuck you in your bed and it hurts but _your daddy likes it rough,_ that’s what Scott told you, and you’re Herc’s son through and through. You can take it. You would take anything, if he would only give it to you. 

This goes on for about two months, you and Scott and your sick imagination hiding in the shatterdome’s corners, and then the next kaiju crawls out of the breach and Lucky Seven ships out to put it down. 

Scott is not as good at keeping secrets as he thinks he is. 

Afterward, people say it’s a miracle the jaeger didn’t go down. As soon as the kaiju is dead, Herc disconnects from his harness and starts beating his copilot so viciously that it takes four techs to pull him off. “What,” demands Marshall Pentecost when he arrives, “happened?” 

Brothers aren’t supposed to tell on each other, but as far as Herc is concerned, he no longer has a brother. Three years in someone else’s memories is plenty of time to find the things they don’t want anyone to know, and Scott Hansen has done a lot of shitty things in his life. His son is the most promising cadet in this year’s graduating class, a hope for the jaeger program when so much is uncertain. There is no record of what pilots see in the drift. What he tells Stacker is not a lie, but it's not the truth either. 

A week and two classified hearings later, Scott Hansen is dishonorably discharged from the PPDC. Nowhere in the official paperwork is there any mention of Chuck’s name. 

…The fact that Chuck and Herc are assigned to be copilots mere months later is proof that the universe loves nothing more than a good joke. 

How can they possibly drift after that? They put on their helmets, and Herc has never been so thankful that Chuck looks like Angela because it means that the RABIT they drop into is Sydney, two sets of memories overlaid on the same mushroom cloud, and not the image of tears in Chuck’s eyes as he’s choking on Scott's dick. Universally-compatible Herc, who has helped a dozen cadets through their first drift, manages to pull them back to the here and now of the simulated kaiju, where he can train their focus on that and nothing else. He throws up in the locker room as soon as his drive suit is off. 

_How much did you see,_ Chuck does not ask him. 

_Is that still what you want,_ Herc refuses to wonder. 

They fight monsters together. They don’t need to talk. The drift, after all, is silence.


End file.
